Daydream around the rods and reels
Mar. 19th, 2004 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaWell, today was supposed to be a trip to a nice restaurant for lunch, a pleasant drive around, and a poke about in Richmond. Only it didn't quite work, on account of lorries having blown over everywhere. The A1 and the A66 (the two major roads here) were both closed due to upside down lorries, one of which had been full of something corrosive (it could cause me problems getting back to Oxford if some silly bugger's melted the A1). So everyone was driving along the pleasant little backroads that we wanted to potter along, and sodding them up royally.
However, we did get our nice lunch. And the wind dropped, but then made up for it by pelting us with sleet (and maliciously came out sunshine again once we got back to the car.)
Among other things, we went to Barnard Castle, and I got to indulge one of my secret vices.
Hardware stores. They're wonderful places.
This one, which claims to be the largest in the northeast, has a narrow front, but goes back for ever. Just inside the door, there's a fine range of kitchenware and general cooking stuff, with only occasional odd things, like big rolls of American cloth. There's coffee machines, and china, and all your usual household clutter.
The further you fight your way back, the more intriguing and hardcore the place becomes. The shelves are packed with things I have no conceivable use for - probably. But one day, just one day, I might need one, and then I'll know exactly where to go. I spent an entertaining (if cautious) few minutes examining the extensive range of mouse and rat traps, from the humane to the viciously spring loaded. I couldn't work out how to set the biggest rat trap, but was somewhat afraid of pulling the wrong lever and inadvertently losing half a finger.
A lot of this stuff is verging on the antique - things that you don't imagine anyone stocks now. Pressure lamp mantles and tin baths. Oil cans and fly-papers. Then there's the deeply specific objects - pressure cooker gaskets, and bits of hard rubber in peculiar shapers; presumably someone knows their function. Ironmongery galore: split rings and G-clamps and all manner of clips, casters and wheels in all sizes. A hunderd different types of string and wire and chain and cord.
Best of all, I found the section where they keep the gubbins used for treating wood. Yup, there was varnish and stain and all the usual things. But at the back of the shelf, miscellaneous packets of things which probably no one born after 1940 knows what to do with - shellac flakes, rottenstone, ground pumice and Van Dyck flakes. Pearl glue and rabbit skin glue - both sold in packets, with instructions for making them up - and even, if one was willing to part with forty pounds, a cast-iron double glue-pot to make them up in. These things have no place in my life, but it makes me immensely happy to know that they exist and, presumably, are useful to someone.
I didn't buy anything, except a natty little case of screw-driver bits to replace the ones which are inexplicably missing from my toolbox. I just pottered round and peered, and prodded, and read old-fashioned looking labels. And grumbled gently that no one sells proper tilly lamps, and that the scone griddle was too expensive for me to buy.
OK, so as vices go, it's hardly impressive. When I'm rich and famous, the Sun probably won't bother running "Elizabeth in ironmonger scandal" headlines. But it keeps me out of mischief on a Friday afternoon.
However, we did get our nice lunch. And the wind dropped, but then made up for it by pelting us with sleet (and maliciously came out sunshine again once we got back to the car.)
Among other things, we went to Barnard Castle, and I got to indulge one of my secret vices.
Hardware stores. They're wonderful places.
This one, which claims to be the largest in the northeast, has a narrow front, but goes back for ever. Just inside the door, there's a fine range of kitchenware and general cooking stuff, with only occasional odd things, like big rolls of American cloth. There's coffee machines, and china, and all your usual household clutter.
The further you fight your way back, the more intriguing and hardcore the place becomes. The shelves are packed with things I have no conceivable use for - probably. But one day, just one day, I might need one, and then I'll know exactly where to go. I spent an entertaining (if cautious) few minutes examining the extensive range of mouse and rat traps, from the humane to the viciously spring loaded. I couldn't work out how to set the biggest rat trap, but was somewhat afraid of pulling the wrong lever and inadvertently losing half a finger.
A lot of this stuff is verging on the antique - things that you don't imagine anyone stocks now. Pressure lamp mantles and tin baths. Oil cans and fly-papers. Then there's the deeply specific objects - pressure cooker gaskets, and bits of hard rubber in peculiar shapers; presumably someone knows their function. Ironmongery galore: split rings and G-clamps and all manner of clips, casters and wheels in all sizes. A hunderd different types of string and wire and chain and cord.
Best of all, I found the section where they keep the gubbins used for treating wood. Yup, there was varnish and stain and all the usual things. But at the back of the shelf, miscellaneous packets of things which probably no one born after 1940 knows what to do with - shellac flakes, rottenstone, ground pumice and Van Dyck flakes. Pearl glue and rabbit skin glue - both sold in packets, with instructions for making them up - and even, if one was willing to part with forty pounds, a cast-iron double glue-pot to make them up in. These things have no place in my life, but it makes me immensely happy to know that they exist and, presumably, are useful to someone.
I didn't buy anything, except a natty little case of screw-driver bits to replace the ones which are inexplicably missing from my toolbox. I just pottered round and peered, and prodded, and read old-fashioned looking labels. And grumbled gently that no one sells proper tilly lamps, and that the scone griddle was too expensive for me to buy.
OK, so as vices go, it's hardly impressive. When I'm rich and famous, the Sun probably won't bother running "Elizabeth in ironmonger scandal" headlines. But it keeps me out of mischief on a Friday afternoon.
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-19 09:45 am (UTC)As opposed to the Mabel Gubbins for mistreating wood?
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Date: 2004-03-19 09:56 am (UTC)I find this a common vice amongst the more girly of my acquaintance.
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Date: 2004-03-19 11:32 am (UTC)If you kept going do you think you'd start finding stone tools really really far back...?
There used to be an odd hardware shop near where I lived. Bobats. It opened at random times, i mean sometimes it was open at 3am and othertimes it was shut at 3pm....
I went in there one day to get a hover bag. For some ancient and useless 1970's hover. Make and model long since worn off. There where hundreds of shelves all far to close together for any human to get down. I walked in, said have you got one of these. The bloke took one look and shouted "hey achmed!".
At which point a hunchback, no really, shuffled out from one of these shelves no human could fit between. "hey achmed... a 1970 mark 3."
Achmed dispears, there's some shuffling and then reappears from a totally different row of shelves. With my hover bags....
I allways wanted to walk in and ask for "one atomic bomb". But I was allways just a little scared they'd give it to me....
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Date: 2004-03-19 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-19 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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